History of Kurds/Iraq

The Kurds are a Sunni Muslim people who primarily live in Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. Their culture is made up of 25 million people. The Turkish, Persian, and Arabic friends/neighbors are not like the other Kurds and Sunni Muslim people. There are many cultural differences between the groups such as: approximately 10 million live in Turkey, four million in Iraq, and five million in Iran, with the rest scattered all across the world. In President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, he promises the Kurds he will give them a sovereign state. The Treaty of Sevres in 1920 said the Kurds could have an independent state if they desired one. They established a semi-independent state as a result and succeeded in forming the Kingdom of Kurdistan. This lasted from 1922-1924.

The Iraqis destroyed approximately 5000 Kurdish villages during the 1980s. From this point on, the recent history and current state of these conflicts between the Kurds and the Turks and the Kurds against the Iraqis is demonstrated.

For instance, the areas of geography and political geography and economic geography are shown. The Kurds are ethnically and culturally different from the Turks and the Iraqis. They speak a different language and all practice slightly different religions.

The Turks and Iraqis look at the contrast in ethnicity in very different senses. The government of Turkey views any religious or ethnic identity not their own to be a threat to the state. In addition, Saddam Hussein believes the Kurds to be a bother in Iraq and perceive them as a threat. He carried out a mass genocide of the Kurds in his country for this reason. A third factor in these conflicts has to do with economic geography. The following areas of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria the Kurds now live in is referred to as Kurdistan. Kurdistan is an important area strategically due to its trade embargo against Iraq that has been in place since 1991.

Meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue4/jv6n4a5